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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Well, I just had a great weekend in Chicago and I was treated royally. I have known Mary Slattery of the Interknits group in Chicago for a few years at Bonnie Triola seminars in Erie PA and then at Inspiration in Cleveland and she vowed to get me to Chicago to meet the group.

In the emails and phone calls leading up to my trip Mary arranged to take me to the Art Institute where I had not been in the years I was there doing the One of a Kind Show Chicago. (The visits were always arranged too early in the morning for someone who needs her rest and is a night person anyway). Wow! What a lovely afternoon we had, including lunch at the Institute. The day was the only fair weather day so when we were done there Mary walked me to Millennium Park where we explored the Bean, or Cloud Gate as it's really called, taking lots of pics of our reflections.

Snakey Scarf

This is one of my Snakey Scarves that I took to show colour and perhaps as an inspiration for some Chrissy prezzies. It's not an original idea but I just ran away with the colour and added a bead or two.

Pics taken after a day teaching, this is my 'oh, how hard it is to knit with a GC!'

These are couple of silly pics of me learning the Garter Carriage in Pam's house after my workshop day. Goofing around as the beast does it's thing. I got so excited and last Saturday took a one day workshop from Eileen Montgomery on mastering my garter carriage. On my return home I found that I have a GC for a punch card machine but an electronic Brother 930. I would need two little magnets to make it work on the electronic. They almost don't exist but I emailed Germany's Strickmachinen and got an immediate reply and PayPal invoice saying if I wanted just pay and they would wing their way to me....can't wait! Designs floating around in my head, but I'll start with some scarvey things for the Holiday Shopping season.

Pam Huang my delightful hostess.

Mary and I stayed at Pam Huang's house as Mary's house is busy being reno'd, our first night we didn't go to bed until after 2am (that's 3am my time), just talking and surfing about knitting and such. I loved being with these two women for the weekend as I am usually alone with my knitter friends on the other end of the 'phone or email.

I'll post again later, must get off to the machine to work on a custom order that must get to my client.

Thursday, November 04, 2010

I know this sounds so silly but I have a new iron....... yeah, big whoop! Well, It's special and I found it (well my husband found it) at a store that sells stuff remaindered from stores such as Sears. He knew my older TFal was giving me a hard time not steaming when I needed for my knitting and brought home another one from Outlet Inc here in Kingston. It didn't work and he checked it and found it was (long electrical story) dead. He said 'come with me and look' which I did and found this CORDLESS iron!!!!

It's made by Panasonic and the reason I glommed onto it is because when I was teaching in Minneapolis in April I someone supplied me with what I thought was a toaster..... it turned out to be a cordless iron from Maytag. (Mary, do you remember that?)

It has this cute clear plastic oven (so unlike the Maytag you can see it's not a toaster!) and a stand. The stand plugs in - can you see the retractable cord? and the iron sits in it and you click the button from off through warm to hot.

It is handy if you are steaming (it vertical steams) or ironing in a strange place.... like something that is in situ and cannot be taken to the ironing board (as was the case when I was teaching.)

Also, it is still available (check out Panasonic) at $99 but I got it for a third of that!!!

Passionate Artisans - 28 Bath Rd, Kingston

L'Artellier du Village. Point-Claire. QC

About Me

I've been running Carolyn M. Barnett Designs for 36 years this June and don't know how to stop! I love working with wool when felting jackets and Nuno felting scarves! I love creating my knits and felted garments and teaching others and there's so much else to do in the world... I'm now also creating web sites for artisans since I built mine and found it another creative outlet and feeds the techy in me!!! I teach other artisans to use Social Media and to sell online.

KnitKnotes

I have put together a little notebook using images of my work over the past three decades. I hope it will be an inspirational place to take knitting notes, sketch your new ideas, log your stash or whatever.